


A Winter's Tale

by SegaBarrett



Category: Queen (Band), Schelkunchik | The Nutcracker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Recording of Innuendo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 06:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17320175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Freddie has a surprising experience in the midst of the recording of "Innuendo".





	A Winter's Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own or know Queen nor do I own The Nutcracker.

Freddie Mercury raised a hand to his eye and rubbed it, yawning, before stifling it with his hand. All he needed was the rest of the band to take a look at him, decide he was fatigued, and cut the session short.

He needed to be in the studio, needed to be working, not sitting around and having people take care of him like he couldn’t take care of himself. Who had time for that? He would keep up with the rest of them or collapse trying.

“So, this sounds solid,” he said a second later, “Maybe just one or two more runs at it, see if we can get it…” He couldn’t find the exact word he was looking for. “Just get it.”

“It’s nearly ten,” Roger pointed out, “Maybe we should break for the night, come back in the morning. We got a lot done.”

“Yeah,” Freddie teased, “I know you have to get out to the clubs before they close.”

Roger snorted.

“And I know your cats worry if you’re out too late.”

Freddie flipped him off. 

Brian packed up his guitar and looked around at the others.

“I’ll see you all tomorrow. Get some rest, all of you.”

“You all go on ahead,” Freddie told them. “I have a few ideas I want to play around with a bit…”

“I look forward to hearing them,” John said diplomatically. 

The others exchanged looks but then let him alone, each walking out of the room and on to the street, to drive themselves back to the hotel.

Freddie switched on a microphone and sang into it, “If you’re searching hard for something, don’t try so hard…”

He liked the sound of that. He’d have to work it out. 

He’d walk back today. It wasn’t so far, and maybe the night air could do him some good. Couldn’t hurt.

***

The girl was standing in at the edge of a fence, cradling a tiny doll in her arms. She wasn’t wearing a coat but instead a nightgown, which struck Freddie as odd. He wondered if she had wandered out of her house, maybe sleepwalking, maybe lost.

“Hello,” he called, hands in his pockets and then moving to stroke the stubble of his beard. That was going to take a while to get used to, it didn’t feel like it suited him the way his moustache had. “Are you all right?”

She looked up at him and shook her head.

“Mice,” she whispered, and Freddie cocked his head to the side.

“Mice?” he echoed, sure that he had heard incorrectly.

She pointed around the corner and then told him, “Follow me.”

Freddie wondered if he shouldn’t go back to the studio and put in a call to Child Services instead, but whatever this girl wanted to show him, he figured he ought to at least see what it was first.

As they walked to the next block, Freddie was surprised to see the Montreaux streets growing larger, as if they could eat him alive. Or was he growing smaller? 

He rubbed at his eyes and wondered if his sleep deprived mind was making him hallucinate. 

“I’m going slightly mad, indeed,” he thought to himself.

He took a step to the left and collided with a huge mouse that was the same size as him, with whiskers that brushed against Freddie’s face and made him step back again, finding himself in front of the now-massive teeth of yet another mouse.

He quickly found himself surrounded. 

“I believe Genesis wrote a song about this,” he mumbled to no one in particular.

And then one of the mice picked up a sword and dove for Freddie.

Freddie let out a surprised yelp and reached down, to his surprise finding his half-microphone within arm’s reach. He grabbed it, not trying to question this all too hard, and began to spar with the huge mouse – rat? _Great King Rat was a dirty old man and a dirty old man was he…_

The swashbuckling rodent swung the sword downward and jabbed into Freddie’s leg, and he took a hard tumble into the ground beneath him. The mouse stood over him, raising his arms – paws? Freddie was still trying to figure all this out – in a gesture of triumph.

A shoe collided with the mouse’s head a second later. 

He looked up to see the little girl from before reaching down and taking his hand, helping him to his feet.

There was the sound of music in the distance, a thrumming beat, and Freddie watched as huge orange birds came down from the sky to land around him. He was transfixed, thinking back to when he had been writing for the Highlander soundtrack. Was this what it was like to see magic in action, for real this time?

A flame erupted right in front of him, and he needed to step back to avoid getting burned. He looked around for the little girl, ready to shield her, but found her standing behind him, transfixed and, slowly, smiling.

And then they flew off, tapping their feet together, feathers flowing across the night sky.

It was beautiful and terrifying.

“What’s your name?” Freddie asked, finally finding words that had been escaping him.

“Clara,” the girl supplied.

“Where do you come from, Clara? This seems like a bit of a dangerous place…”

He didn’t have time to finish his thought, as she began to run eagerly down the road.

“Come with me, Freddie!” she exclaimed, and Freddie bit back the fact that he hadn’t told her his name. Maybe, he figured, he just had that noticeable of a face, even now that his looks had been changing from his trademark moustache.

He rushed after her, figuring that leaving her alone in this strange place wasn’t a good idea. Once he tracked her down, he could return her to her parents or a fire station or something.

As he ran, he noticed that snowflakes were beginning to fall. How did he not know that it was going to snow? Normally one of the boys would have at least mentioned it.

He noticed specks of it catching over his hand, on his jacket, and he shivered, wishing he had brought a heavier one. Brian was going to give him hell if he caught a cold, and rightfully so, but he couldn’t have been prepared for a snowstorm, could he?

There were snowbanks forming as the specks sped up, and he tried to keep close to Clara. This no longer looked like any part of Montreaux he remembered, and he’d been sure he had memorized every street around here up and down at some point. 

“Clara! Slow down!” Freddie called out, chasing after her. The snow was so white and thick that he couldn’t see in front of himself at all. He turned his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes, but it seemed almost frozen solid.

He felt a smaller hand grab his.

“It’s okay, Freddie,” Clara declared. “I think we’re in the land of snowflakes.”

He shut his eyes. Everything was still pure white and there was nowhere left to go.

***

He didn’t know how he got out of the snowdrift, and he must have fallen asleep somewhere in there, but he was now in a large, bright room surrounded by shelves and shelves of candies and sweets, which seemed to be looking at him in a way that Freddie wasn’t entirely able to figure out.

A beautiful woman, hovering a few feet above the ground with pink wings, floated over to Freddie and Clara and looked at them with a smile.

“You saved our kingdom from the Mouse King,” the woman said, “You are very brave.”

“I don’t mean to be impolite,” Freddie inquired, “Who are you exactly?”

“I’m the Sugarplum Fairy,” she said, voice high and airy, floating.

“…I’m pretty sure I’m drunk, if I wasn’t before.”

“You saved us all from the Mouse King.”

 _Great King Rat,_ Freddie thought, and let out a sigh.

“It was this girl that did it – she threw a shoe at him. I thought I was done for.” He let his hand go down to his leg, where he had been certain he’d been bleeding not so long ago. To his surprise, there was nothing there.

Definitely off in a fantastic world, he considered, definitely off in a dream. Maybe I fell asleep in the studio and Roger hasn’t bothered to wake me.

“You deserve a medal, both of you,” the Fairy said, swinging a leg into position and kicking up on her feet to hover above ground and then to slip a medal around Clara’s neck.

Freddie knelt down slightly to allow her to put one around his, too, though he didn’t feel like he deserved it. Maybe if this album, maybe if it was truly the best album, for it would so likely be the last he would ever get to put out into the world.

“I should get back to my band,” he said, “And Clara should get home, too.”

“Let us entertain you, first… You deserve it.”

Freddie sighed, figuring that Brian particularly as probably worried sick about him by now. But it would be so nice to just be able to sit down… 

To watch a show. That never got old.

“Sure,” he agreed, shrugging his shoulders. 

The Sugarplum gestured, and a man in a rose-colored waistcoat floated over and pulled out chairs, gesturing for he and Clara to sit in them.

He nearly collapsed into his, letting his arms rest over the arms of the chair. Things were about to get weird, most likely. He slung one leg over the other. It wasn’t like he wasn’t prepared for weird on a daily basis.

They started with a series of women dressed in long, flowing dark brown dresses; the hot chocolate dancers, they were called, and the room smelled like hot cocoa indeed. Freddie shut his eyes and could remember standing beside the other boys in the band, dropping marshmallows into a cup and laughing. Roger always seemed to put in too many, where you could barely even see the chocolate at all because it was so thick. 

He missed them. 

After that, there were candy canes, toffees, Arabian coffee dancers, and every other sweet Freddie could imagine.

And then he was pulled to his feet as the room was full of flowers, dancing flowers.

He extended his arms and took Clara’s hands in his, dancing around the room with glee. He seemed to know instinctively when to spin her, and when to dip, when to shuffle his feet around her as he watched the others do the same.

Everything was so beautiful.

It made him think of the video for It’s a Hard Life, how magical everything had looked even though the rest of the band had been so annoyed. He chuckled to himself as he remembered John refusing to wear his unicorn head.

Then it was time for them to all back up, to watch the Sugarplum Fairy dance with her darling Cavalier. There was such love in both their eyes that it made Freddie think about the people he had loved. 

The people he was leaving.

The people he couldn’t leave just yet.

He rubbed at his eyes, trying to avoid tearing up. No need to cry, now. Not in such a beautiful place as this.

They glided through the air and it caught his breath.

And then they were finished.

He took a deep breath. 

“This is hard for me to say,” he said quietly, “But… I need to go. And I believe little Clara does, too. I know she has people back home who must be waiting up for her. And my friends must be waiting for me, too.”

“No…” the Sugarplum said with a smile. “Hundreds of years can pass here while nary a second passes back in your world. It makes things very convenient.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Freddie said, “And yet… as a dear friend reminded me recently… the show must go on.”

***

“I live right here,” Clara said with a shy smile, gesturing towards a big white house off to the side of the lake. “I just didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to come back so soon. I wished you to life and you came to life.”

Freddie chuckled.

“I’ve been alive a long time,” he said, “I don’t know if…” Then he paused. “You know what? You’re right, darling. You wished me to life.”

“Merry Christmas, Freddie,” she said, running through the gate and opening her door. He could hear her climbing the stairs inside.

He walked back to the studio and let himself in, noticing a chill in the air as he switched on the heater.

“Freddie? Where have you been?”

Freddie turned to see Brian, peeking up in the dark from one of the sound machines. 

“I just stepped out for a moment, for a walk,” Freddie replied.

“In this weather?”

“Yeah, it was dumb. Don’t mother hen me, Brian.” Freddie yawned and rubbed at his eyes. “You won’t believe the night I’ve had.”

“I must have fallen asleep on the machine… I can’t get this mix right.”

Freddie sat down beside him and knotted a hand in Brian’s hair.

“What was that for?” Brian asked.

“Just missed you. Now… let’s hear this mix and see what we need.”

**The End**


End file.
